Frank Michael Russelltag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-18678752013-05-19T20:22:59-07:00Frank Michael Russell | Media | Technology | JournalismTypePadBrazil: Globalization, Digital Media, and a Nation's Olympic Challengetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c01901c5d5ca3970b2013-05-19T20:22:59-07:002013-05-19T20:22:59-07:00In an increasingly globalized world, rapid economic growth has brought attention to four BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. While these countries have been grouped together since a Goldman Sachs report on emerging economies in 2001 (Lemann, 2011), they each have their own cultures, politics, and financial strengths and weaknesses. Brazil will take its place on the world stage in the next few years as host of the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympic Games in 2016. The country—South America’s largest both by population and land size—will have a chance to show whether...Frank Michael Russell

In an increasingly globalized world, rapid economic growth has brought attention to four BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. While these countries have been grouped together since a Goldman Sachs report on emerging economies in 2001 (Lemann, 2011), they each have their own cultures, politics, and financial strengths and weaknesses.

Brazil will take its place on the world stage in the next few years as host of the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympic Games in 2016. The country—South America’s largest both by population and land size—will have a chance to show whether it has matured into a major Latin American and global power.

Brazil was once “one of the most uneducated, economically unbalanced countries in the world,” Lemann (2011) wrote. Today, it has a narrowing gap between rich and poor, fiscal solvency, low inflation, and a free press. In the past decade, 28 million Brazilians have been rescued from severe poverty. Even so, Brazil struggles with crime and a lack of investment in education and infrastructure. In the next decade, a growing middle class could demand that politicians change their priorities to solving those problems (Lemann, 2011).

Revolutionaries in Charge

“Unapologetic former revolutionaries” now control Brazil, Lemann (2011) wrote. President Dilma Rousseff, elected in 2010, adopted leftist views as a university student after a military coup in 1964. She was imprisoned and tortured for three years by Brazil’s military dictatorship in the early 1970s. After she was released, Rousseff earned a graduate degree in economics, joined a more mainstream political party, and pursued a career as a government bureaucrat. Rousseff, who believes the purpose of economic development is to improve living conditions, was the chosen successor of the popular Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as just “Lula.” A co-founder of the Partido Trabalhadores (translated as Workers’ Party), Lula also was jailed in the 1970s as a union official who led strikes and opposed the dictatorship (Lemann, 2011).

Like India, Egypt, Indonesia, and other developing countries, Brazil pursued a “middle path” during the Cold War, Zakaria (2011) wrote, between U.S.-style capitalism and Soviet-style socialism (p. 23). However, that path “turned out to be a road to nowhere” by the late 1970s with stagnating growth, he wrote. The Soviet Union’s collapse further discredited the idea of a centrally planned economy.

As Friedman (2007) noted, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 “allowed us to think about the whole world differently—to see it as a seamless whole” (p. 89) in a way that ultimately propelled the BRIC economies. In this post-Cold War world, Friedman wrote, leaders in developing countries entered “an era of broad macroeconomic reform” (p. 408), often using authoritarian power to transform their countries into market-based economies. According to Zakaria (2011), the recent trend in Brazil and most of Latin America “has been toward open markets, trade, democratic governance, and an outward orientation” (p. 19). Nonetheless, Judt (2010) observed, these countries haven’t embraced a British or American distrust of central authority, nor have they “matched Britain or the United States in their unwavering thirty-year commitment to the unraveling of decades of social legislation and economic oversight” (p. 13).

Brazil’s military dictatorship ended in 1985. In the late 1980s, Zakaria (2011) noted, Brazil was one of “dozens of large, important countries” (p. 26) that struggled with hyperinflation. In the next decade, “one after the other of these developing countries moved soberly toward monetary and fiscal discipline” (p. 26). Brazil’s middle class was relatively isolated from hyperinflation’s worst effects, but the poor were forced to spend immediately what little money they had (Lemann, 2011). Fernando Henrique Cardoso, finance minister under President Itamar Franco, developed a plan to fight inflation with a new currency, the real. Cardoso, who kept inflation stable and privatized state-owned companies, was elected president in 1994 and 1998. Lula was Cardoso’s opponent in both contests. With Cardoso’s decision to retire in 2002, Lula finally won the office by moving closer to the political center (Lemann, 2011).

In an interview with Lemann (2011), Lula explained that he found that managing Brazil’s economy as president more complex than he had expected as a union leader. Lula pursued policies of fiscal stability while expanding social programs. The Bolsa Família, or family grant, was directed to a quarter of Brazil’s population, but Lula insisted that recipients keep their children in school and vaccinated. “We proved it was possible to grow, to distribute income, and to do so with social inclusion without inflation,” Lulu told Lemann (2011).

Rousseff has continued many of Lulu’s policies, but has differed in style, Lemann (2011) wrote: “Lula didn’t pay attention to details; Rousseff knows the details of everything. He was all politics, she is all policy.” Rousseff also has shown an intolerance for corruption and a recognition that the middle class might become impatient with large government subsidies for the poor at the expense of adequate infrastructure and education (Lemann, 2011).

A Global Economic Power in Latin America

The global financial crisis of 2008, Zakaria (2011) wrote, accelerated the shift since 2001 in power to Brazil and other BRIC countries. Economies in these countries “are now large enough that they have significant economic activity of their own (domestic demand) that does not rely on exports to the West” (p. 48). In this new world, Friedman (2007) noted, investment “is no longer driven primarily by American or Western multinationals” (p. 487). As Biggemann and Fam (2011) explained, “In the current world business context when two or more companies interact, the likelihood of a BRIC being supplier or buyer is large” (p. 6).

As their economies have grown, the BRIC countries have acquired greater political power. In 2008, “India and Brazil were willing to frontally defy the United States at the Doha trade talks,” Russia attacked Georgia, and China hosted the Summer Olympics, Zakaria (2011) wrote. “Ten years ago, not one of the four would have been powerful or confident enough to act as it did” (p. 4). Lula told Lemann (2011) that Brazil decided “to strengthen our relations with the Middle East, China, India, and Africa, without cutting off our good relations with the U.S. and the E.U. Our idea was to diversify our relations as much as possible.”

Brazilians have resisted demands from environmentalists in the United States and Europe to preserve at all cost the vast Amazon rain forest, Mann (2011) noted:

Yes, we are in favor of the environment, they say. But we also have many millions of desperately poor people here. To develop your economy, you leveled your forests and carpeted the land with strip malls. Why can’t we do the same? (p. 364, emphasis in the original)

As one example, Rousseff approved a hydroelectric dam that was opposed by environmentalists because it will flood a large area of the rain forest (Lemann, 2011).

Brazil’s Challenges

Rouseff has worried that Brazil’s growth will slow and inflation will climb (Lemann, 2011). In her view, the global financial crisis led to a weaker U.S. dollar, which increased the costs of Brazil’s products in the United States. “The reaction of the U.S. and the E.U. has been to export the crisis,” she told Lemann. “They flooded the market with excessive liquidity.” Brazil’s economic growth began to slow in 2012. Rouseff has reduced payroll taxes, and Brazil’s central bank has cut interest rates, but businesses struggle with the costs of an overvalued currency, inadequate infrastructure, and government bureaucracy (The Economist, 2012). The economy also is challenged by high consumer debt, as well as slower growth in China, which imports commodities from Brazil (Malkin & Romero, 2012). Brazil, like other developing countries, must compete with China and other rapidly growing economies, Friedman (2007) noted. “This has created a process of competitive flattening, in which countries scramble to see who can give companies the best tax breaks, education incentives, and subsidies, on top of their cheap labor, to encourage offshoring to their shores” (p. 140), Friedman wrote.

Poverty remains a problem in Brazil and other developing countries. However, Zakaria (2011) wrote, “the poor are slowly being absorbed into productive and growing economies” (p. 3) in Brazil and in much of the world. Rouseff, in a speech early this year considered the kick-off for her 2014 re-election campaign, announced increased benefits for 2.5 million of Brazil’s poorest residents (The Economist, 2013). As the number of people in poverty has declined, Kristof and Wudunn (2009) noted, Brazil is among the countries where IQ scores have improved sharply in recent decades. “As people become better nourished and better educated, they perform better on intelligence tests” (p. 239), Kristof and Wudunn wrote.

Brazil is fighting crime in the favelas outside cities such as Rio de Janeiro with permanent encampments of police officers. With 19 “pacification units” in Rio’s favelas requiring thousands of police officers and social service workers, and a goal of 40 by 2014, the project shows Brazil’s “ambition and power, its determination to put on a good face for the World Cup and the Olympics, and the enormity of its need for resources if it is going to take the next step in its national development,” Lemann (2011) wrote. Although life has improved in these favelas, residents worry that police will leave after the Games (Regalado, 2012). Rio also has faced criticism for evicting thousands of poor people from their homes to build stadiums and other Olympic facilities (Romero, 2012).

The country is racing to finish the infrastructure it needs to successfully host the World Cup and Olympics. In March, Rio de Janeiro’s mayor ordered the closing of the João Havelange stadium after structural problems were discovered (Watts, 2013). The opening of the Maracanã stadium—which will host the World Cup final and the opening and closing Olympic ceremonies—also has been delayed (Watts, 2013). Olympic Park construction is expected to begin in July (Diniz, 2013). Many new facilities for the Games will be in “a Miami-like middle-class refuge” 20 miles from Rio de Janeiro’s center (Regalado, 2012). “Here the poor are less in evidence, and strangely the charm of the cidade maravilhosa,” or “Marvelous City,” Regalado wrote.

Media in Transition

Media in Brazil are guaranteed freedom of expression by the country’s 1988 constitution, but they operate in an economic and political environment shaped by the legacy of past authoritarian governments, followed by a push toward free markets and globalization, Matos (2011) wrote. As in other Latin American countries, Lugo-Ocando et al. (2011) explained, media ownership is dominated by an elite who share upper-class, Western values, and this elite is now in conflict with left-wing leaders.

Individual journalists in Brazil prefer a U.S.-style value of “non-involvement” in politics compared with a more “interventionist” approach common in the past (Mellado et al., 2012). According to Albuquerque and Gagliardi (2011), Brazilian newspapers began to adopt a modernized, U.S.-style journalism based on “objectivity” and “technical, fact-centered language” in the 1950s, when Rio de Janeiro’s Diário Carioca moved away from “the old, literary and politically engaged model of journalism” (p. 80).

Brazil’s media are among the most resilient in Latin America (Matos, 2011). Although foreign competitors have entered the country since the 1990s, Brazil along with Mexico have “stronger national production markets and audiences” (p. 181) than other Latin American countries. According to Holanda et al. (2008), over-the-air television reaches 90% of Brazil’s population and all parts of the country, “with enormous sociocultural consequences” (p. 19).

Throughout Latin America, Matos (2011) wrote, “it is clear that the state is still very politicized, more than three decades after the fall of the dictatorships” (p. 185). Governments in Brazil and other Latin American countries have pushed media policies that emphasize social and economic development, Matos (2011) wrote. Brazil’s government has pushed for the expansion of high-speed Internet to the country’s poorest residents and for the creation of digital television channels for the government’s education, communication, and cultural ministries. The government viewed a conversion to digital television as a means to bridge the “digital divide” by incorporating interactivity into new hardware (Holanda et al., 2008; Pretto & Bailey, 2010).

Kristof and Wudunn (2009) offered an example of the influence of media on social conditions in a developing country. In the few years after a television network expanded to a new area in Brazil, the birth rate declined, especially among poorer and older women. “That suggested that they had decided to stop having children, emulating the soap opera characters they admired” (p. 245), Kristof and Wudunn wrote.

Established broadcasters and newspaper publishers in Brazil, though, have criticized state involvement as possibly restricting freedom of the press (Matos, 2011). Media owners have been opponents of Lula and Rousseff (Lugo-Ocando et al., 2011). Right-wing media have focused on Rousseff’s revolutionary past rather than her experience in the decades since and her current views (Lugo-Ocando et al., 2011).

Brazil has a rapidly growing population of Internet users, with 75 million as of 2010 (Gilmore, 2012), and an “unequaled embrace of digital media” (p. 620) compared with both developed and other developing countries. Even so, Internet use in Brazil reflects conditions in a country, as Pretto and Bailey (2010) wrote, where “a large base of excluded individuals claim a small portion of the wealth, while the privileged class reside at the top of the socio-economic pyramid” (p. 266). Social media play a significant role in public life in Brazil, despite the persistent digital divide, Gilmore noted. As in other developing countries, Pedrozo (2013) wrote, “lack of computer literacy, cultural and economic factors” have contributed to Brazil’s digital divide, but more affordable mobile technology is increasing Internet use—at least among younger people in lower socioeconomic classes.

In preparation for 2014’s presidential election, Sustainability Network candidate Marina Silva, who finished third in 2010, is turning to social media to gather the signatures she needs to run again. “It is likely to succeed,” The Economist (2013) noted, because “Brazilians are among the world’s most prolific users of Facebook and Twitter.” The political effect of social media was noted in 2010. Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, a clown known as “Tiririca,” won twice as many votes as any other congressional candidate in part because of his campaign’s use of Orkut (Brazil’s most popular social networking site), YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter (Gilmore, 2012).

Conclusion

Brazil is a success story in an age of globalization. Its leaders have grown their economy while subduing inflation and rescuing millions from poverty. The country has a thriving media, and its people are avid users of Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, and other social networking sites. Despite its promising growth, Brazil’s discourse is dominated by the country’s past, including corruption and a political system still recovering from years of authoritarian rule. Brazil struggles with crime, poverty, and a lack of investment in education and infrastructure. The country is confronting those problems as it prepares to host the two biggest global sporting events, the World Cup and Summer Olympics. The country will draw the world’s attention to its “Marvelous City,” Rio de Janeiro. It also will have a chance to show its transformation into a better Brazil.

Storytelling in the Digital Age: ‘Being There’ with Kapuściński and Herodotustag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c01901c5d490f970b2013-05-19T20:10:17-07:002013-05-19T20:10:17-07:00In Travels with Herodotus, Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński alternated between two compelling narratives—passages from Herodotus’ The Histories, culminating with the tragic conflict between the Persians and the Greeks, and his own travels as a foreign correspondent in India, China, and countries in Africa. Although separated by many centuries, Kapuściński and Herodotus used journalistic approaches to crafting narrative text. Their stories took on a dramatic, cinematic quality. Kapuściński discovered a world beyond Poland in the Cold War era. Herodotus documented an epic tragedy that ended with the downfall of a great ancient empire. In both narratives, readers discover new worlds through...Frank Michael Russell

In Travels with Herodotus, Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński alternated between two compelling narratives—passages from Herodotus’ The Histories, culminating with the tragic conflict between the Persians and the Greeks, and his own travels as a foreign correspondent in India, China, and countries in Africa.

Although separated by many centuries, Kapuściński and Herodotus used journalistic approaches to crafting narrative text. Their stories took on a dramatic, cinematic quality. Kapuściński discovered a world beyond Poland in the Cold War era. Herodotus documented an epic tragedy that ended with the downfall of a great ancient empire.

In both narratives, readers discover new worlds through the eyes of Kapuściński and Herodotus. For this reader, Travels with Herodotus benefited from the use of two screens. The book itself was read on a tablet computer with Amazon.com’s Kindle software, while a laptop was used to search on the Internet for characters in Herodotus’ Histories and for the settings of Kapuściński’s travels.

In a digital age, narrative text still can be a compelling storytelling choice. However, today’s journalists can choose among—or combine—numerous other storytelling tools. This essay examines five media tools that could enhance the story for a journalist retracing the two writers’ travels: film, personal narratives, interactive maps, social media, and blended multimedia.

Storytellers must be aware of the challenges for the reader (or listener or viewer) to move from a condition of “getting there,” where thinking about how a medium is used might be a barrier to understanding, to “being there” (Wise et al., 2009). “Being there” through media is no substitute for physically being there with Kapuściński and Herodotus. However, because in the human brain we don’t distinguish between messages received through in-person and mediated communication (Lang, 2009), an effective narrative can create its own version of reality, or “being there,” for the reader.

Film

With their epic scope, the stories of Kapuściński and Herodotus easily could be told in film (or video). As Bilandzic and Busselle (2011) noted, film allows the viewer to construct a model of a self-contained world. This is especially effective when filmmakers provide a perspective (for example, that of a character such as Kapuściński or Herodotus) for a story, take viewers on a journey through that constructed world, and provide a sense of “telepresence” that replaces the distractions of the actual world with a perceived reality of the film (Bilandzic & Busselle, 2011).

As one example, the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008) immersed its audience “in the contradictions of a megacity” (Krstic, 2011). The film was criticized for not accurately representing the hardship of poverty in Mumbai. However, adhering more to the conventions of a Bollywood gangster movie, director Danny Boyle created a consistent alternate reality for the viewer, Krstic contended.

Although Kapuściński and Herodotus described a world based on real events, their stories were told from individual perspectives. Because both writers’ stories were from the past, the reality they described no longer exists. Film, however, could be used to create a substitute reality that would help an audience better understand their worlds.

Personal narratives

Although written text and video are effective storytelling tools, producers of programs such as Ira Glass’ This American Life have discovered that public radio listeners love to connect with audio recordings of people telling their own personal narratives (Butler, 2006). People are often eager to tell their stories.

Butler offered the example of StoryCorps, which set up recording booths at Grand Central Station and at Ground Zero in New York and took a mobile recording booth to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, with the possibility that individuals’ stories would be heard on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. “The larger context of the personal-narrative renaissance has to do with the democratization of news-bringing,” Butler wrote, “and the fact that perhaps right now we are remembering something that we have always known: good raconteurs are everywhere” (p. 32).

New technology has made recording audio simpler than ever (Butler, 2006). It would be easy to imagine a journalist retracing the stories of Kapuscinski and Herodotus as a personal narrative.

Interactive maps

The stories in Travels with Herodotus occurred in locations that might not be familiar to readers. Interactive maps could help the audience better understand the significance of these locations.

In recent years, journalists have been considering how maps and other interactive graphics could be used better as storytelling tools. For example, Davidson (2009) envisioned an “economic weather map” for NPR’s Planet Money website that would help readers determine how the financial crisis was affecting people like them in different parts of the country and allow contributors to offer their own stories about the downturn.

In a non-fictional example, Shirky (2013) described how the Homicide Watch website has used an interactive map as a starting point to tell the stories of murder suspects and victims in Washington, D.C.

Interactive graphics can be challenging for journalists in traditional newsrooms (George-Palilonis & Spillman, 2013). Although journalists are excited about the possibilities of interactive graphics, it can be time-consuming to do them correctly. Producing interactive graphics requires software skills beyond those of a print graphic artist. In some newsrooms, editors question whether the payoff in page views is worth the time and effort. However, in such newsrooms as The New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, editors value interactive graphics as an effective storytelling tool (George-Palilonis & Spillman, 2013).

Social media

A journalist in 2013 traveling in the footsteps of Kapuściński or Herodotus might track his journey on social media such as Facebook or Twitter. In the past decade, these sites have changed the way we communicate with each other.

For that matter, social media were used to organize protests that led to the downfall of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. Halverson, Ruston, and Trethewey (2013) cautioned against giving too much credit to social media for the Arab Spring and not enough to the sacrifices of protesters who died “carrying out individual acts of defiance” (p. 313) in those countries. However, they noted that social media were an effective tool for telling those protesters’ stories.

“The primary method by which their stories spread was through social and electronic media,” they wrote, “assuming the form of virtual reliquaries or electronic sites of encounter with the martyrs’ stories and iconography, providing an opportunity for personal connection” (p. 313, emphasis in the original). For example, Google executive Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Saeed,” named for a 28-year-old who was fatally beaten by police (Halverson, Ruston, & Trethewey, 2013).

Blended multimedia

The Internet allows storytellers to combine the strengths of different kinds of media. Online journalists can use written text, audio, and video. In addition, the Internet—unlike print, radio, and television—can be interactive in a way that allows for non-linear storytelling. According to Wise et al. (2009), combining narrative text with video can provide information about a news event while drawing “an individual into the story, in essence, moving the audience into ‘being there’ ” (p. 535).

Online examples such as The New York Times’ “Snow fall: the avalanche at Tunnel Creek” (Branch, 2012) and The Kansas City Star’s“Beef’s raw edges” (McGraw, 2012) demonstrate the power of combining text with multimedia elements such as video, audio, and interactive maps at exactly the point in a story where they are relevant to the narrative.

Conclusion

A retracing of Travels with Herodotus with today’s digital storytelling tools would use different kinds of media to enhance readers’ understanding of the authors’ stories. Media cannot substitute for experiencing a place or culture in person. However, blended multimedia with video, audio, and interactive graphics put directly in the most meaningful points in a narrative text could bring readers closer to “being there” with Kapuściński or Herodotus.

A Robot’s World: After Outsourcing, Offshoring, and "The World is Flat"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c01901c5d31f4970b2013-05-19T19:53:46-07:002013-05-19T19:53:46-07:00In The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman (2007) argued that 10 political and technological forces—most notably, outsourcing and offshoring—have flattened our planet. Globalization supporters have contended that these trends have increased wealth throughout the world. However, other economists have responded that globalization has not been without its costs, among them short-term disruption for workers whose jobs have been moved overseas and an increased use of energy from fossil fuels that has exacerbated the problem of climate change. Finally, moving beyond the trends that Friedman identified in The World is Flat, technological development might bring permanent displacement for many of...Frank Michael Russell

In The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman (2007) argued that 10 political and technological forces—most notably, outsourcing and offshoring—have flattened our planet.

Globalization supporters have contended that these trends have increased wealth throughout the world. However, other economists have responded that globalization has not been without its costs, among them short-term disruption for workers whose jobs have been moved overseas and an increased use of energy from fossil fuels that has exacerbated the problem of climate change.

Finally, moving beyond the trends that Friedman identified in The World is Flat, technological development might bring permanent displacement for many of the world’s workers.

In this next wave of innovation, robots would manufacture many products, taking the jobs of human employees here in the United States and overseas in countries such as China.

Friedman’s 10 Forces

Friedman (2007) identified 10 forces that have led to a flatter world. As the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed, our entrepreneurial, capitalistic society fostered the development of the personal computer by Apple, Microsoft, and other technology companies.

That was followed by the commercialization of the Internet by Netscape Communications and other venture-capital-backed technology upstarts; although the dot-com boom and bust demonstrated capitalism’s excesses, the world was left with a wealth of fiber-optic cable connecting the continents.

By 2004, entrepreneurs and engineers had developed workflow software that standardized the online exchange of information. Open-source software such as Apache simplified the storage of data on powerful Internet servers.

Shrewd business people realized that these telecommunication advances allowed work to be outsourced to more efficient, less expensive service providers in countries such as India. For that matter, entire production lines could be offshored to countries such as China.

Supply-chain technology allowed giant retailers such as Wal-Mart to collaborate directly with suppliers to provide customers exactly what they want, when they want it. UPS and other companies reinvented themselves as logistics managers, insourcing to themselves work they could provide more efficiently than their customers.

Google, Yahoo, and other search engines brought a world of information to anyone with a computer and Internet connection. Finally, mobile devices brought us that information almost anywhere, not just our homes and offices.

Costs of Globalization

Samuelson (2004) argued that mainstream economic thinking emphasizes the wealth-creating benefits of globalization while dismissing the short-term and potential long-term human costs. It is possible that short-term job losses could lead to temporary gains for other workers, in the form of less-expensive goods imported from countries with lower wages, he wrote. However, Samuelson continued, this equation works only as long as higher-wage countries can specialize in what they’re best at, remaining more efficient at making more valuable products. When lower-wage countries become more efficient in the production of all goods and services, every worker’s pay would fall, leading to a lower standard of living in the formerly wealthier countries.

At the same time, the potential benefits of globalization rely on the exchange of goods between countries. Even in a flat world, these goods must be transported over vast distances, requiring the use of fossil fuels. Furthermore, Soleymani (2010) argued, the energy used to make inexpensive, easily disposable goods has exacerbated this trend (p. 108). Most global energy use is from non-renewable sources, he noted, resulting in carbon emissions that contribute to climate change (p. 109). As temperatures and sea levels rise, he wrote, millions of people will become “environmental refugees” (p. 117). “The impacts of climate change will be felt everywhere, with the world’s poorest countries feeling it the most” (p. 117), Soleymani wrote.

Rise of the Robots

Economist Paul Krugman, Friedman’s colleague on TheNew York Times op-ed page, wrote that the next big technological disruption is displacing workers both in wealthy nations such as the United States and developing nations such as China.

The rise of the robots, Krugman (2012) argued, is bringing manufacturing back to the United States, but leaving countries rich and poor with fewer jobs for human workers. For example, Krugman explained, robots now make motherboards, the most valuable component of a personal computer. This technological change “places labor at a disadvantage,” leading to “monopolistic power” over the job market for large corporations, he wrote.

Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2011) described the potential scale of the problem. For the past 200 years, they wrote, automation has destroyed jobs while creating wealth. Workers could keep their jobs by accepting lower wages. Robots, however, change this equation. Once capital has been used to acquire them, robots work for no pay, and human labor cannot compete. “The worker would go unemployed and the work would be done by a machine instead,” Brynjolfsson and McAfee wrote. For example, Chinese computer manufacturer Foxconn already employs thousands of robots and has plans to use hundreds of thousands more, they noted.

As digital and robotic automation continues, Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2011) warned, even mid-skill jobs are at risk. The only humans who could benefit from this trend are market-leading “superstars.” In the music and other media industries, digital technology allows popular performers to pull in huge profits because each extra copy of a product costs essentially nothing to make. Robots bring this economic reality to manufacturing. After capital costs are recouped, each extra product sold is far more profitable than when human workers had to be paid to make it.

Conclusion

Friedman (2012), to his credit, has acknowledged some of the problems humanity faces in a flatter, but more technologically complex world. In a New York Times column written during last year’s Republican presidential debates, he outlined a potential think-global-act-local solution to globalization’s challenges. Successful communities, he argued, revolve around “ecosystems” that provide access to the best technology while encouraging human education and innovation.

“The best of these ecosystems will be cities and towns that combine a university, an educated populace, a dynamic business community and the fastest broadband connections on earth,” he wrote, offering examples such as Cambridge, Mass.; Austin, Texas; and Silicon Valley in California. “These will be the job factories of the future.” Connected to each other by the Internet, “human capital” in these communities will mine the data generated by billions and billions of machines, Friedman argued. “Like raw materials of old,” he wrote, this data will be analyzed and manipulated “for new inventions in health care, education, manufacturing and retailing.”

The idea that massive mining of “Big Data” could lead to the next wave of human innovation might not be comforting for critics of globalization, and it’s possible that Friedman places too much faith in technology to solve the problems it has caused.

At the same time, it’s unlikely we could ever return to a time when our world was still round. Without our social networks, digital devices, other technological comforts, and probably even our robots, we almost certainly would want nothing more than to return to the flat world we know.

Soleymani, M. (2010). The heavy price of globalization: globalization and sustainable development. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 9, 101-118.

Social Media, SEC Football, and the Missourian ICE Desktag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c01910252f5ef970c2013-05-19T19:43:07-07:002013-05-19T19:56:59-07:00This post was originally published at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog. With the Missouri Tigers joining the Southeastern Conference, we knew the 2012 football season was going to be big. Probably the first question that many Tigers fans had was: Could Missouri compete against big-name SEC teams such as the Alabama Crimson Tide, the Georgia Bulldogs and the Florida Gators? Sadly, the answer was no. At the Columbia Missourian, every department in the newsroom — Greg Bowers' sports department and our football beat reporters, Brian Kratzer and the photo desk, the city desk and Joy Mayer’s community outreach team —...Frank Michael Russell
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p><em><a href="http://www.rjionline.org/blog/social-media-sec-football-and-missourian-ice-desk" target="_blank">This post was originally published</a> at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog.</em></p>
<p>With the Missouri Tigers joining the Southeastern Conference, we knew the 2012 football season was going to be big.</p>
<p>Probably the first question that many Tigers fans had was: Could Missouri compete against big-name SEC teams such as the Alabama Crimson Tide, the Georgia Bulldogs and the Florida Gators?
</p>
<p>Sadly, the answer was no.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154603/missouri-falls-behind-early-cant-recover-against-alabama/" target="new"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-buaHTPY9pJA/UNDPrDExYQI/AAAAAAAAAIk/h9vlWBYqgrA/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.004.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/153156/photo-gallery-in-sec-debut-tigers-fall-to-bulldogs-41-20/" target="new"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-socnHkweU_k/UNE9bvVWGsI/AAAAAAAAAJA/aN_wZtMJWkU/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.005.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/155474/commentary-with-loss-to-florida-missouris-bowl-chances-dwindle/" target="new"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-WmdQLYHMC88/UNE9bgP3JVI/AAAAAAAAAJI/fMONp_RLg8k/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.006.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>At the <em>Columbia Missourian</em>, every department in the newsroom — Greg Bowers' sports department and our football beat reporters, Brian Kratzer and the photo desk, the city desk and Joy Mayer’s community outreach team — geared up to cover Tigers football like never before. Could we pull it off?</p>
<p>Happily, the answer was yes.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154590/missouri-fans-prepare-for-the-worst-before-alabama-game/" target="new"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-s9_8gWt9Omg/UNE9cJYhERI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/Kgq1j7PBda0/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.009.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154595/photo-gallery-missouri-tigers-face-alabama-crimson-tide/" target="new"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-TI7fVnx_CDQ/UNE9cM65BcI/AAAAAAAAAJc/uDvwaUGA_c4/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.010.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154586/alabama-rv-convoy-stakes-claim-near-mu/" target="new"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-B_q05G2YJss/UNE9cZ6II3I/AAAAAAAAAJY/PnqxfbOotXY/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.011.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154601/missouri-alabama-fans-share-passion-spirit-before-game/" target="new"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-m2fljNkGbfM/UNE9cZBasvI/AAAAAAAAAJg/HLz1cA4DAEA/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.012.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>On the <em>Missourian</em>'<em>s</em> interactive copy editing (ICE) desk, we knew we would have to gear up to handle all of these extra stories, especially on game Saturdays. But we weren’t willing to stop there. The <em>Missourian</em> had become <a title="Blog post about Missourian digital transition" href="http://transition.columbiamissourian.com/2011/09/13/its-not-just-a-copy-desk/" target="new">a Web-first newsroom with the ICE desk at its hub</a>. We wanted to take what we had learned about online presentation, social media and aggregated news content and apply it to one of the biggest stories of the fall semester. Could the ICE desk update our coverage in real time and use social media and news aggregation to enhance our readers' fan experience?</p>
<p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-FGQ9JjK2sKY/UNE9dLKmuqI/AAAAAAAAAKA/POjSd7KSxNM/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.015.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E4Ho4eNXCLE/UNE9dB7bTjI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/HXJdh5MD1Eg/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.016.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="372" /></p>
<p>Fortunately, we had the help of five independent study students who were ICE desk veterans:</p>
<p>Zach Miller, who wrote a <a title="Tigers Report column" href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154524/tigers-report-could-missouri-pull-off-upset-against-alabama/" target="new">weekly aggregated game preview</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154524/tigers-report-could-missouri-pull-off-upset-against-alabama/" target="new"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-9OJJu-e7-iU/UNE9dbvlIUI/AAAAAAAAAKE/xT4mOEBEyKQ/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.018.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>Justin Brisson, who helped us bring game-day social media commentary to our website.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5-gzX5tQ53Q/UNE9doIXqxI/AAAAAAAAAKI/Y_gj3dGKVec/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.019.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>Jim Ayello, who hosted live game-day conversation on our @CoMoSports Twitter account.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6ALdwbBHL0g/UNE9d5c12LI/AAAAAAAAAKM/V0c_RuN3Pz0/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.020.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>Laura Oberle, who experimented with using <a title="Missourian tailgating food board on Pinterest" href="http://pinterest.com/comissourian/tailgating-food/" target="new">social-media as a storytelling tool</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://pinterest.com/comissourian/tailgating-food/" target="new"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9-lfixj59BA/UNE9eFWJuVI/AAAAAAAAAKk/EluY1gVNmIY/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.021.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>And Nick Sullivan, who managed our new <a title="Missourian Tigers Report Facebook page" href="https://www.facebook.com/MissourianTigersReport" target="new">Missourian Tigers Report Facebook page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/MissourianTigersReport" target="new"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-WmHics9rKmY/UNE9ePWoLpI/AAAAAAAAAKc/_cRptCNNk5Q/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.022.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>The project was based to a large extent on what we have learned so far about social media and online presentation at the Missourian—and what I learned in my first year as the <em>Missourian</em>’<em>s</em> Knight visiting editor and as a graduate student in the <a title="Center for the Digital Globe website" href="http://cdig.missouri.edu/index.html" target="new">Center for the Digital Globe</a> certificate program based at the <a title="RJI website" href="http://www.rjionline.org/" target="new">Reynolds Journalism Institute</a>.</p>
<p>When I talk to students about writing and editing for the Web, I ask them to consider the differences and the strengths of the various kinds of news media. The Web is unique in that it allows a combination of detailed text, still images, audio and video—everything that’s good about print, radio and television.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9HIQfcXWH5g/UNE9evSd6eI/AAAAAAAAAKg/_Z7etv12Yhc/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.024.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>Like radio and TV, the Web can be immediate, although we in the newspaper industry haven’t always taken advantage of that. Unlike print, TV and radio, the Web is interactive. We can use hyperlinks to get from one place to another online. That’s a strength, but researchers at the Missouri School of Journalism and elsewhere also have found that it’s a weakness, because the Web can be harder to use than other kinds of news media.</p>
<p>The <em>Missourian</em> has been a leader in the industry’s transition from print-first to digital-first. For at least the first decade of the Web as a news medium, most newspapers merely repurposed their print content online.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-jzPpAOnZkE0/UNE9fBOfEkI/AAAAAAAAAK4/HTUcYx5CMkA/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.025.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>About five to 10 years ago, more newspapers began posting breaking news stories on their websites, but often without the benefit of copy editing them first. At the <em>Missourian</em>, with the help of my predecessor, Nick Jungman, <a title="Nick Jungmann blog post about Missourian transition" href="http://transition.columbiamissourian.com/2011/01/04/radically-changing-the-desk-it-works/" target="new">we established a digital-first newsroom with the ICE desk at its hub</a>. We reinvented the role of the copy editor as a producer and curator of Web content who promoted the newsroom’s work on social media.</p>
<p>I believe we’re at a unique point in the history of the Internet as a news medium. Like the transition to radio, or from radio to TV, we’re discovering that the Web is at its best when we emphasize its strengths. Like radio changed after TV became the dominant source of news, print is now changing to emphasize art, design and packaging—context, in short. We’ve started down this path at the <em>Missourian</em>.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--KdHQMn8dhE/UNE9fKx3tTI/AAAAAAAAAKw/8wru_QqWNKk/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.026.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>Aggregated news content is uniquely suited for the Web. Researchers at the Missouri School of Journalism’s PRIME Lab and elsewhere have found that the Web is a short-attention-span medium. The Internet audience is active and usually engaged in our content, often because readers have sought out stories on specific topics. However, this audience isn’t always fully engaged. The online reader is a multi-tasker, watching TV or listening to Spotify while writing a paper on his laptop and checking Twitter on his iPhone. At its best, <a title="Blog post about aggregated news content" href="http://transition.columbiamissourian.com/2011/10/07/aggregation-storytelling-missouri-football-and-the-sunday-team/" target="new">aggregated news content helps sort out an array of confusing choices</a> on the Web—or it’s interesting by itself, even if a reader never clicks on a link.</p>
<p>There are <a title="Blog post on the three levels of news aggregation" href="http://transition.columbiamissourian.com/2011/10/07/the-three-levels-of-news-aggregation/" target="new">three kinds of aggregated content</a>. We think of the first kind—cut and paste—as the most common. The next level, though, is more of a public service: providing links to useful information and letting the reader know what to expect when she clicks on any of those links. But for a good writer, aggregation also can be a tool for storytelling. In this case, the writer uses online information as sources for an original story.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-wenWuopt_pQ/UNE9ftZQ7LI/AAAAAAAAALQ/lNTtnNkDdEM/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.028.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>I came to the Missourian from the <em>San Jose Mercury News</em> in Silicon Valley, where the biggest story was the tech industry. The <em>Merc </em>was a pioneer in using news aggregation to supplement its technology coverage on SiliconValley.com with the popular&nbsp;<a title="Good Morning Silicon Valley" href="http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/" target="new">Good Morning Silicon Valley blog</a>. I wrote an aggregated daily newsletter, <a title="60-Second Business Break at San Jose Mercury News" href="http://www.mercurynews.com/60-second-business-break" target="new">the 60-Second Business Break</a>, which was mostly about Apple, Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley tech companies.</p>
<p> At the <em>Missourian</em>, the biggest story is probably Mizzou sports. We developed a weekly aggregated column, The Week in Missouri Football, which later became The Week in Missouri Sports. We also started The Week’s Most-Read Stories, which often was dominated by football and basketball, and sometimes was even itself one of the week’s most-read stories.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/141718/the-week-in-missouri-football-tigers-celebrate-homecoming-win-before-facing-no-6-oklahoma-state/" target="new"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-qunASw6MUsg/UNE9fyboTvI/AAAAAAAAALI/U_0MAIsWphw/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.029.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/145285/the-weeks-most-read-stories-we-are-mizzou-and-dgb/" target="new"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-RxAH0qAbDus/UNE9f3FlrRI/AAAAAAAAALM/q2Wi2JSlG_o/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.030.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>We also used aggregation for individual news topics. One of the stories I’m most proud of is a collaboration with the community outreach team. In fall 2011, the city of Columbia was considering deep cuts in the transit budget, and the people most affected were probably not big readers of newspapers or news websites. So <a title="Blog post about Missourian community outreach team" href="http://transition.columbiamissourian.com/2011/10/03/outreach-team-serves-democracy-along-with-taylor-swift-fans/" target="new">Joy’s team put together a flyer summarizing the issue</a> to be passed out before a City Council meeting. That flyer included a QR code to this aggregated story by ICE desk editor Victoria Guida which provided more background and links to Missourian reporting.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/140550/guide-understanding-the-columbia-transit-debate/" target="new"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-INYvmiZ1HNU/UNE9gRUWRMI/AAAAAAAAALg/vjiHScIOe8E/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.031.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>We’ve also produced aggregated news content based on special events such as the Republican and Democratic national conventions ...</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/152640/convention-highlights-for-romney-a-focus-on-economic-disappointment/" target="new"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Fdgc3970Pys/UNE9gs8N1zI/AAAAAAAAALw/4FHZW3fCpio/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.032.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>... and the Summer Olympics.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/151563/olympic-highlights-phelps-makes-history-us-takes-gold-in-womens-gymnastics/" target="new"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-GUtcqnFdeu0/UNE9gnpJRAI/AAAAAAAAALo/gNwC47fbyFk/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.033.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>The Missourian also is a leader in the use of social media. It’s important to consider, though, that different social media platforms have different purposes, and that there’s a reason why.</p>
<p>The two most popular social media platforms for disseminating news are Facebook and Twitter. If you’ve seen the movie "The Social Network," you know that Facebook was founded by Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook started as an exclusive club for college students at Ivy League and other elite schools, opened next to students at top research schools such as Mizzou, then everyone who had a dot-edu email address could join. This elite, college-age audience had established the norms for using Facebook when the rest of us could join in 2007.</p>
<p>By contrast, Twitter was founded by techies in the Bay Area to solve a problem. A customer of one wireless service couldn’t easily exchange text messages with customers of another wireless company, and Twitter was a way around this. Twitter was first used by other techies in the Bay Area startup world, who established conventions such as #hashtags, retweets and @mentions.</p>
<p>At the Missourian, we have two teams that use social media frequently. On the ICE desk, we promote stories on our <a title="CoMissourian on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/comissourian" target="new">@CoMissourian</a> and <a title="CoMoSports on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/comosports" target="new">@CoMoSports</a> Twitter accounts and on our <a title="Columbia Missourian Facebook page" href="https://www.facebook.com/ColumbiaMissourian" target="new">Columbia Missourian</a> and <a title="Missourian Tigers Report Facebook page" href="https://www.facebook.com/MissourianTigersReport" target="new">Missourian Tigers Report</a> Facebook pages. The community outreach team works with the rest of the newsroom to use social media as both reporting and community engagement tools.</p>
<p>The “four C’s” we teach our journalism students still apply to social media. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of academic research about how the news industry can most effectively use Facebook and Twitter. We have some evidence that a conversational tone works better than merely broadcasting headlines. One of our graduate students, Haoyun Su, did a study for us over the summer about our @CoMissourian account and concluded that was probably true, but her sample size was too small to determine that at a level of statistical significance. Strategic-communications and marketing researchers have found a lot of evidence that because social media is a conversation, it’s important to be genuine. I suspect that’s probably true on the news side, too.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ZQH5QudVn1M/UNE9hceNxkI/AAAAAAAAAL8/FeLVYpEeovA/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.037.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>So what did we do for Missouri’s first SEC football season?</p>
<p>Joy and I created a new Facebook page to promote the Missourian’s college football coverage. The <a title="Missourian Tigers Report Facebook page" href="https://www.facebook.com/MissourianTigersReport" target="new">Missourian Tigers Report page</a> was largely Nick Sullivan’s project, although the ICE desk and Joy's teams contribued significantly to the content. In just the first month, the page had more than 350 likes and resulted in more than 1,500 Missourian page views, 148 likes for our posts and 16 posts shared.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/MissourianTigersReport" target="new"><img src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/a-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="969" /></a>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Justin Brisson wrote the Tigers Report Archive, a <a title="Tigers Report Archive aggregation" href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154563/tigers-report-archive-coverage-of-missouri-football-players-tough-inaugural-sec-season/" target="new">player-by-player aggregation with links to coverage by our football beat reporters</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154563/tigers-report-archive-coverage-of-missouri-football-players-tough-inaugural-sec-season/" target="new"><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/b-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>Zach Miller, who often wrote <a title="The Week in Missouri Football column by Zach Miller" href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/143259/the-week-in-missouri-football-regular-season-ends-with-victory-over-kansas/" target="new">The Week in Missouri Football</a> when he was on the ICE desk, was responsible for the <a title="Tigers Report aggregation" href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154524/tigers-report-could-missouri-pull-off-upset-against-alabama/" target="new">weekly Tigers Report column</a>, which was a preview of the game based on commentary from other online sites. Zach also incorporated video highlights we subscribe to from the SEC Digital Network.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154524/tigers-report-could-missouri-pull-off-upset-against-alabama/" target="new"><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/c-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="1163" /></a></p>
<p>Justin also compiled a live game-day feed of Twitter conversation. He curated lists of Twitter accounts relevant to each week’s game, then built the feeds using Twitter’s developer widgets. He also found a “Tweet to CoMoSports” button that we used here and elsewhere on the site.</p>
<p><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/d-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="1163" /></p>
<p>Jim Ayello hosted our live conversation during each week’s game on @CoMoSports. This sounds like fun, but it wasn’t easy. At first, we tried to be objective by retweeting authoritative sources on Twitter. But we found that was actually angering some of our audience, because they were already following those accounts. We decided we should offer more original commentary, but it’s also difficult to balance being interesting and upholding the standards we teach our sports reporters. Pretty soon, though, Jim found the right formula of engaging our followers with questions that would bring interesting responses. And we ended the season with more @CoMoSports followers than when we started.</p>
<p><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/e-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="1163" /></p>
<p>On the home page, we built a centerpiece with score updates and new links whenever we posted new stories or photo galleries. We also included links to the Tigers Report Facebook page, the MU Tiger Challenge game and previous coverage that was only available to our digital subscribers. </p>
<p>My intention was to put to use some of the lessons of Missouri School of Journalism Associate Professor Paul Bolls' research from his 2011-2012 RJI fellowship. He found that <a title="Article by Paul Bolls on brain-friendly Web design" href="http://www.rjionline.org/blog/working-hard-make-news-sites-friendly-so-your-brain-doesn%E2%80%99t-have" target="new">the brain interacts better with websites that are well-designed and that group related information together</a>. With all of our game-weekend coverage, it would have been easy to overwhelm readers. In our home page centerpiece, we tried to build a well-organized table of contents to everything on our site related to that week's game.</p>
<p>This page was a collaboration of the ICE desk. I built the page initially, and an ICE desk editor kept the banner up to date. After a few weeks, Missourian news editor Elizabeth Conner and her Friday crew were building the early version of the page, which we updated Saturday. Later in the season, Justin was in charge of producing the centerpiece during away games.</p>
<p><img src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/f-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>The banner at the top of the page linked to this story, which updated the score in the lead and headline, included a Twitter feed from a list from Justin and links to Missourian stories. Garrett Evans, our Saturday ICE desk assistant news editor, helped me keep this up to date.</p>
<p><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/g-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>One of the biggest challenges we gave ourselves was getting photo galleries posted earlier. It’s very time-consuming to build photo galleries in our Django content management system, so Elizabeth Conner developed a method of building galleries by embedding photos that are posted on Flickr. That allowed us to set a goal of posting a tailgating and pre-game gallery before each game started and a game action gallery before the game ended. Thanks to Elizabeth’s ingenuity and hard work by the photo and ICE desks, we met that goal most of the time.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/155138/photo-gallery-fans-line-up-early-for-mu-homecoming-parade/" target="new"><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/h-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/155160/photo-gallery-missouri-defeats-kentucky-at-homecoming-game/" target="new"><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/i-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="1163" /></a></p>
<p>Laura Oberle experimented with some creative ways of using social media as a storytelling tool. For example, she took photos of food and interviewed fans about their tailgating recipes, posted those photos on Facebook ...</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.285140351588118.50954.278736708895149&amp;type=3" target="new"><img src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/j-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="922" /></a></p>
<p>... produced a story for our website with the actual recipes ...</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/153689/missouri-football-fans-cooking-up-tasty-tailgating-recipes/" target="new"><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/k-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></a></p>
<p>... then pinned the photos on Pinterest with links directly to the spot in the story where that recipe starts.</p>
<p><a href="http://pinterest.com/comissourian/tailgating-food/" target="new"><img src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/l-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="326" /></a></p>
<p>For the Alabama game, she collaborated with a city desk general assignment reporter to interview and take photos of visiting Crimson Tide fans, posted that album on Facebook ...</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.292905557478264.53175.278736708895149&amp;type=3" target="new"><img src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/m-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="375" /></a></p>
<p>... then brought the story in vignette style to our website.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/154593/alabama-fans-take-over-downtown-columbia/" target="new"><img style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://web.missouri.edu/~russellf/football/n-tigers-report.jpg" alt="" width="465" height="1163" /></a></p>
<p>Finally, we also posted updates whenever the score changed on the Missourian Tigers Report page and at the end of each quarter on our main @CoMissourian and @CoMoSports accounts.</p>
<p>So did our experiment work? Although the <em>Missourian</em> is an experimental newspaper, it’s impossible to conduct a true experiment in a newsroom, because there’s no way to control outside influences on our results. You could argue that news is defined as variables that cannot be controlled. There’s also the question of how we measure success. Although there were several options, I chose page views.</p>
<p>The number of game-day page views varied considerably depending on the opponent. Alabama was the best game day, at more than 31,000. Texas A&amp;M was a disappointment, suffering in comparison with the last Big 12 game the year before with our border-state rival, Kansas.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-l7RDGR1nx4s/UNE9iqmWE8I/AAAAAAAAAMs/Lw4iAlXowFI/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.044.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>That was overall page views. Our college football page views were up pretty much across the board. Traffic more than doubled, with variations for conference or non-conference and home or away games. We had more interest last year, though, in the 100th MU Homecoming and the game against Iowa State in 2011 than in the 2012 Homecoming and game against Kentucky. These charts show total college football page views for the season, based on Google Analytics data. The figures for conference, non-conference, home and away are per-game averages.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-YHlhodb2P0w/UNE9i_ROuzI/AAAAAAAAAMw/h6GtniU93AM/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.045.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>Although game day was our focus, our team and the rest of the newsroom also put more effort into coverage throughout the Friday-to-Sunday football weekend. Our college football page views also increased substantially by this measure, although not as strongly as just game days.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-H8lOLebRhH8/UNE9jKjb8DI/AAAAAAAAAM4/jHHHNhPEmWQ/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.046.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>Finally, our college football page views throughout the week were up more than 7 percent.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-iieXnGizdgk/UNE9jBw5H2I/AAAAAAAAAM8/YH3t-P51ViI/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.047.jpg" alt="" width="465" /></p>
<p>Our team’s aggregation projects brought in more than 50,000 of those total season page views, which was responsible for part of the increase in game-day and three-day traffic.</p>
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-UG5fNDU4Y04/UNE9jUvSEmI/AAAAAAAAANA/VbBwIriOhfE/s640/social%2520media%252C%2520sec%2520football%2520and%2520the%2520missourian%2520ice%2520desk.048.jpg" alt="" width="465" />
<p>However, we also had more readers for our football beat reporters’ stories, photo galleries and coverage from the city desk and community outreach teams. In almost every sense, our newsroom effort was a success.</p></div>
At ColumbiaMissourian.com, a Craving for Online Olympics Coveragetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c017743efad08970d2012-08-05T14:53:55-07:002013-05-19T19:57:31-07:00This post was published originally on the Columbia Missourian's The Transition blog. Our nightly Olympic Highlights aggregation feature has been very popular with readers at ColumbiaMissourian.com, so I want to share some Google Analytics traffic data. Here are page views so far, excluding readers from the Missourian newsroom: July 29: 2,829 (the most popular story on the site since the Olympics began) July 28: 1,832 July 31: 1,034 July 30: 830 Aug. 2: 475 Aug. 1: 365 Aug. 4: 271 Aug. 3: 213 This nightly feature has been produced by editors on the Missourian's interactive copy editing (or ICE) desk....Frank Michael Russell

Our nightly Olympic Highlights aggregation feature has been very popular with readers at ColumbiaMissourian.com, so I want to share some Google Analytics traffic data. Here are page views so far, excluding readers from the Missourian newsroom:

This nightly feature has been produced by editors on the Missourian's interactive copy editing (or ICE) desk.

The average time on site for these stories has been very good, ranging from 1:14 to 3:11. The time on site is affected by the number of photos in the gallery and the number of AP Olympics videos. Readers are apparently looking at the videos, even though they aren't as compelling as I had hoped due to a lack of footage from the competitions. (Instead, AP is using still photos and interview footage.)

At ColumbiaMissourian.com, we've had more than 20,000 page views of stories with "Olympic" in the URL or headline since July 22.

By the way, our AP Summer Games site has had 1,170 page views since we launched it July 22, according to Google Analytics. Although that isn't a huge number, the site has had a relatively good 1:13 average time per page. The largest source of traffic by far is direct referrals from ColumbiaMissourian.com. The site has also been useful for ICE desk production because we don't have to post every story that we use as a link in our Olympic Highlights aggregation.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with Olympics coverage on the Missourian's website.

Copy Editors Can Be Web Content Creatorstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c016304f3c481970d2012-04-29T18:14:12-07:002013-05-19T19:58:07-07:00This post was originally published at the Columbia Missourian's The Transition blog. I'm proud of the aggregated content Columbia Missourian journalists have created over the past two semesters on our interactive copy editing desk. As the news industry tries to find its way toward a successful transition from print-oriented to "digital first" thinking, it's tempting to view copy editors as a costly budget line rather than a valuable resource. Other journalists, including American Copy Editors Society President Teresa Schmedding, have defended our profession by showing that copy editors create value for news organizations. Copy editors can be skilled at writing...Frank Michael Russell

I'm proud of the aggregated content Columbia Missourian journalists have created over the past two semesters on our interactive copy editing desk.

As the news industry tries to find its way toward a successful transition from print-oriented to "digital first" thinking, it's tempting to view copy editors as a costly budget line rather than a valuable resource.

Copy editors are also skilled at aggregating content. We've been doing that for decades by creating index material and packages of wire news briefs for print newspapers. In the digital-first environment, we can create similar material that can be posted as valuable, reader-friendly online content.

Here at MU and the Columbia Missourian, Missouri sports is to us what Silicon Valley's technology industries are to the Mercury News and SiliconValley.com. Missourian journalists on our interactive copy editing — or ICE — desk have brought thousands of page views to our site with The Week in Missouri Sports and The Week in Missouri Football features, which link to the best sports stories on ColumbiaMissourian.com and to interesting commentary on other sites, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Kansas City Star, ESPN, and even our crosstown rival, the Columbia Daily Tribune.

We're just getting started. At our newsroom — and yours — copy editors could build aggregated content around coverage of high-interest topics such as crime news, education and high school sports. As for the rest of 2012, we'll build aggregated reports on the London Olympics in the summer and the presidential election in the fall.

Media, Innovation and Current Events | A&T, Aereo, Yelp, Zyngatag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c0168e84183cc970c2012-03-01T19:46:34-08:002012-03-01T19:46:34-08:00AT&T is changing the definition of “unlimited” for its unlimited data plans, according to a Los Angeles Times story. The company now will slow down data transmission for 3G customers who exceed 3 gigabytes of data a month and for 4G LTE customers after 5GB. According to the article, AT&T is blaming “soaring mobile broadband usage and the limited availability of wireless spectrum.” Data speeds for customers with tiered plans won’t change. Even so, AT&T’s decision has ramifications for media innovators with mobile business models. If other carriers adopt the policy, it will become harder for mobile-based startups to rely...Frank Michael Russell

According to the article, AT&T is blaming “soaring mobile broadband usage and the limited availability of wireless spectrum.” Data speeds for customers with tiered plans won’t change. Even so, AT&T’s decision has ramifications for media innovators with mobile business models. If other carriers adopt the policy, it will become harder for mobile-based startups to rely on customers using their phones and other devices to upload or download video and other bandwidth-heavy content.

Established media companies are often suspicious of the impact of technology on their businesses. In the 1970s, for example, Disney and Universal unsuccessfully sued Sony, contending Betamax video recording technology was used to steal the studios’ content. According to a Los Angeles Times post, six major television networks — NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, PBS and Univision — are suing Aereo, which offers Internet transmission of broadcast television channels and a virtual DVR for $12 a month. “This service is based on the illegal use of our content,” ABC, CBS and NBC contended, according to the article. Aereo is backed by IACInterActiveCorp., an Internet company led by former entertainment industry executive Barry Diller.

Yelp has priced its initial public offering at $15 a share, according to The New York Times’ Dealbook blog. At that price, Yelp would have a market value of nearly $1 billion ($898.1 million, to be specific). Moreover, unlike other social media companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Zynga, Yelp is not yet profitable. The company had a $16.9 million loss last year on $83.3 million in revenue. Furthermore, as Yelp’s business matures, it expects revenue growth will slow. It will be interesting to see whether investors embrace Yelp’s stock when it starts trading Friday. Internet companies could count on an IPO frenzy during the dot-com bubble era, but investors today expect more solid business models.

Zynga wants to introduce you to virtual friends to play its virtual games. According to a New York Times article, the San Francisco company — which makes such games as “FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars” — is starting a “zFriends” service to connect players of its social games who don’t know each other in real life. According to the article, the new service will allow Zynga to become less dependent on Facebook. As players’ real-life friends lose interest in the games, play can drag out for days. If players can find zFriends, however, play will speed up, allowing Zynga to sell more virtual goods that make it easier to succeed in its games.

Media, Innovation and Current Events | Health Costs, L.A. Times Paywall, Facebooktag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c0168e7ed784f970c2012-02-24T13:12:52-08:002013-05-19T19:58:39-07:00An Internet startup in Santa Monica is offering a new website that makes it easier to compare prices on prescription drugs, according to a column by David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times. GoodRx lets consumers type in their location and the name of a medication to get prices from several pharmacies. For example, I typed in “65201” and “Astelin,” a nasal antihistamine spray for people who have severe allergies. GoodRx showed prices for the brand-name drug ranging from $123.57 at Wal-Mart to $141.37 through Costco’s home delivery. However, it also showed prices for generic azelastine ranging from $78.59 with...Frank Michael Russell

For example, I typed in “65201” and “Astelin,” a nasal antihistamine spray for people who have severe allergies. GoodRx showed prices for the brand-name drug ranging from $123.57 at Wal-Mart to $141.37 through Costco’s home delivery. However, it also showed prices for generic azelastine ranging from $78.59 with a GoodRx coupon at Gerbes to $100.35 at the Regional Medical Plaza Pharmacy.

Speaking of the Los Angeles Times, it’s the latest large newspaper to announce plans for an online pay wall, according to an article on its site. As with many pay walls for newspaper websites, readers will have access to a certain number of articles for free — the Times is allowing 15 for each 30-day period. Subscribers of the print newspaper will not be charged for digital access. Other readers who want more than 15 articles a month will be charged $1.99 a week along with a subscription to the Sunday newspaper or $3.99 a week for digital-only access. Yes, the combined digital and Sunday subscription is cheaper than an online-only subscription. That’s an interesting strategy that helps the Times increase its circulation for its profitable Sunday newspaper.

Facebook is about to announce plans to place advertising more prominently on its site, according to a San Jose Mercury News article with links to documents obtained by the newspaper. According to the article, the larger ads will be targeted to friends of Facebook members who “Like” a marketer’s Facebook page. “ It almost brings advertising into the realm of the testimonial and word of mouth," Altimeter Group analyst Rebecca Lieb said, according to the article. The story noted that Facebook’s user growth is beginning to slow now that it has 850 million members. However, with an initial public stock offering set for later this year, Facebook will be under pressure from Wall Street investors to continue its exponential growth.

Media, Innovation and Current Events | Washington Post, iPad Ads, Demand Mediatag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c0163019134ed970d2012-02-17T14:24:11-08:002013-05-19T19:59:06-07:00Newspapers have struggled in the past decade in the transition from print to digital media. A New York Times article this week examined The Washington Post’s effort to protect its reputation for high-quality journalism while drawing readers to its website. For The Post, its highly profitable Kaplan college and test-preparation business somewhat insulated the newspaper from a shrinking print advertising market. Now, however, Kaplan also is struggling after the federal government restricted the ability of for-profit colleges to sign up students, who often took out burdensome student loans to pay their tuition. At The Post, executive editor Marcus Brauchli and...Frank Michael Russell

For The Post, its highly profitable Kaplan college and test-preparation business somewhat insulated the newspaper from a shrinking print advertising market. Now, however, Kaplan also is struggling after the federal government restricted the ability of for-profit colleges to sign up students, who often took out burdensome student loans to pay their tuition. At The Post, executive editor Marcus Brauchli and publisher Katharine Weymouth have integrated the online operation — which actually had been based in an office across the Potomac River — into the main newsroom. Attracting online readers is the newsroom’s main priority. Although The Post brings in many page views with features such as celebrity news, it also offers popular political features such as Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog. Ultimately, The Post has realized it will be most successful if it serves its core audience — which it can identify as readers with “.gov” and other government email suffixes— with highly relevant stories. In that sense, The Post is sticking to its main mission while adapting to a digital future.

One of the strengths of newspapers has been their ability to display high-impact advertising, but publishers have had less success with online ads. Many news Web pages are dominated by numerous small ads that only add to the clutter. Tablets such as the iPad, on the other hand, allow publishers to include engaging, interactive multimedia ads on their news apps, according to a Nieman Journalism Lab article by Ken Doctor. The Wall Street Journal, for example, includes interactive ads from customers such as Charles Schwab Corp. and Putnam Investments on its app for Apple’s iPad. These high-impact ads are targeted directly to the Journal’s core readership.

A little more than a year after its initial public offering, Demand Media this week reported a $6.4 million loss for its most recent quarter, according to a Los Angeles Times article. Demand Media, which operates the eHow website, built a business model on producing inexpensive content based on what people were searching for on Google. However, after Google changed its search algorithm to put less emphasis on what it considered lower-quality content, Demand Media’s articles disappeared from the top of Google’s rankings. “The business model they had for producing content no longer works,” JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens told the newspaper. Demand Media now is trying to shift to photos, videos and humorous content designed to be shared on Facebook and other social networks.

Sources:

Doctor, K. (2012). The newsonomics of ads that go bump in the night. Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved from http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/02/the-newsonomics-of-ads-that-go-bump-in-the-night/

Peters, J. (2012, February 11). A newspaper, and a legacy, reordered. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/business/media/the-washington-post-recast-for-a-digital-future.html

Media, Innovation and Current Events | LinkedIn's 'Freemium' Success; Plus: News Video, a Smaller iPad?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a01156f7e7134970c0168e71d4478970c2012-02-10T11:26:55-08:002013-05-19T19:59:56-07:00LinkedIn’s fourth-quarter earnings report this week demonstrated the value of a “freemium” model for information businesses. LinkedIn, like other networking websites, has attracted a large number of members — about 150 million, according to the earnings news release — by offering its basic service for free. The Mountain View, Calif., company makes most of its money by selling access to its large, easily targetable audience to employment recruiters and advertisers. In the quarter, the “hiring solutions” business brought in $84.9 million, or about half of LinkedIn’s $167.7 million in total revenue. “Marketing solutions” accounted for $49.5 million, or 30 percent...Frank Michael Russell

In the quarter, the “hiring solutions” business brought in $84.9 million, or about half of LinkedIn’s $167.7 million in total revenue. “Marketing solutions” accounted for $49.5 million, or 30 percent of revenue. In addition, LinkedIn sells premium subscriptions with extra services to its members — bringing in $33.3 million, or one-fifth of total revenue. LinkedIn earned a $6.9 million profit in the quarter.

According to a Los Angeles Times post this week, Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil believes that Apple will start selling a version of the iPad with a 7-inch screen this year after the introduction of the iPad 3, which would have a 9.7-inch screen like previous iPad models. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs previously had dismissed the idea of a 7-inch iPad, saying that size would be “too small to to express the software,” according to the post. Now, however, Apple faces competition from smaller tablets such as the Kindle Fire. For media innovators, a smaller iPad would reinforce the challenge of providing digital content on mobile devices with a variety of screen sizes.